When I landed at Heathrow, I took the Tube to Hyde Park Corner Station. “It’s not far from the station,” Mimo instructed me on the phone before I left. “It may shock you to see him in this state,” she said about Aba, describing the feeding tube that went through his nose to his stomach. “So prepare yourself, and try not to act stunned when you see him.”

We were taking turns helping Ami take care of Aba. His health had declined rapidly after we sold the Stoner house. His muscles were deteriorating slowly. He could still walk, but had lost the ability to speak. And eventually he lost the ability to swallow, so he stopped eating, which is when he went to London for medical care. Ami and Aba were staying in a small two bedroom flat near Hyde Park that one of their friends had generously offered them.

Mimo came to the door when I arrived. Everyone seemed cheerful, despite the fact that Aba looked like a walking skeleton. “Foosie!” Ami greeted me. Aba was sitting on a chair in the living room with a blanket over his legs.

“Come,” Mimo said just as I was sitting down on the sofa. “I’ll show you how I do the laundry.There isn’t a washer dryer in the flat, so we have to go to the laundromat.”

She led me out of the building and straight to a pub where we both ordered a lager. “Are you okay?” Mimo asked. “It’s shocking at first,” she said. “But he’s in good spirits.”

We finished our beer, and headed to the laundry while Mimo explained the routine. She was leaving to go back to Connecticut the next day. The laundry needed to be done daily since he soiled himself and the bedding at night.

In the morning we’d bathe him. Towel him dry and put lotion on his body. He always put powder between his toes when he was healthy, so we continued that ritual. But we didn’t bother to dress him fully. It was too complicated. Instead we’d pull a t-shirt over his head and a makeshift diaper under his underwear and lead him to the chair in the living room where he sat happily most of the day. A blanket would cover his bare legs.

We fed him through the tube in his nose, keeping up with his rituals like afternoon tea. He had lost so much weight that we tried to load him down with calories, hoping he’d put on a few pounds. “Let’s put condensed milk in his tea,” I suggested to my mother.

“Good idea,” she said. I loaded his afternoon tea down with sugar and condensed milk. “It’s not like he can taste it,” I said to Ami.

When Akhter Aunty came to visit, Aba got out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote her a note. “They think I don’t know that they are putting condensed milk and sugar in my tea,” he wrote. “Please tell them to stop. All I want is a simple cup of Earl Grey tea.” He was serious, but the note made me smile.

“Too bad,” I teased him. “I’m the decision-maker now.”

He still had his sense of humor, too. On occasion, he’d get up from his chair, walk down the hall to the kitchen where Ami and I might be preparing food and motion for me. “What is it?” I’d ask. “Do you need something?”

I’d follow him down the hallway, marveling at how he seemed so comfortable walking around in a diaper. His whole life he never came down in the morning unless he was impeccably dressed. But that vanity disappeared with his illness.

He’d walk back into the living room and sit in his chair pointing to the blanket, which I would pick up and put back on his legs. About the third time this happened I figured out his trick.

“Wait just a minute,” I said. “You’ve been getting up from the chair for no reason, so the blanket falls to the ground and then you walk down the hallway, interrupt what I’m doing to make me come and put the blanket on you?” Well, I’m on to you now.” Aba smiled. That twinkle in his eye glistening.

Aba, before he got sick.